Hmm right, I though it was something to do with smoothing,
So with 2 burner drills, It shows its 2 pollution over 5 seconds, that scales to 24 pollution over a minute, which seems right,
But then the tooltip does say 12 per second, which for a whole minute would be 720

However, I have a different guess regarding the origin of this issue. The per second pollution seems to have been linked to the pollution value overhaul in 0.17.12 viewtopic.php?f=3&t=67694 , it's likely that it used to be per second when a biter spawn consumed ~20k pollution, but has been changed to per minute in 0.17.12

Yes, this was a big error on my side. I thought all the time, that it is pollution per second, and the balance and numbers seemed to work, but when I investigated, it actually means pollution per minute.
I was not sure what to do, as if I wanted to have it still per second, to line up with the other things per second, I would have to change (migrate) all the pollution values again (pollution on map, biter join to attack values, evolution modifiers, server presets etc.). And then the pollution statistics measured in per minute wouldn't line up with the machine statistics per second anyway.

Long story short, to keep it simple, I decided to basically keep the internal numbers, and just fix the way it is presented to the player.
I also had to upgrade the way it is specified in the prototypes, as emissions_per_second_per_watt just can't stay there forever, so I made a new (third already, I'm sorry), property. Which is called emissions_per_minute, which don't need to be normalised by the energy to show nice values (it is done internally by the engine instead). The old definitions still work, so it won't break any mods, but it is preferable to use the new property.

changelog wrote:Bugfixes:

After a realisation of a big misleading mistake, the pollution per second had to be renamed to pollution per minute, because it is what it actually is. (68269)

Modding:]

Added emissions_per_minute property in the energy source, that is supposed to replace the emissions_per_second_per_watt which was basically wrong and hard to work with, both emissions_per_second_per_watt emissions definition will work for some time (at least in 0.17) so mods don't get broken.

Yes, this was a big error on my side. I thought all the time, that it is pollution per second, and the balance and numbers seemed to work, but when I investigated, it actually means pollution per minute.

This actually is (like the rest of the pollution issues) more of a documentation problem than a game problem, the game is reasonably balanced at this point, all that needs to be changed is for the pollution values to go from per second to per minute in all of the documentation, in-game and otherwise. The actual raw numbers appear to be all in good order and show up correctly in the production panels etc.

I agree with you that the solution you've presented is probably the best way forward.

After a realisation of a big misleading mistake, the pollution per second had to be renamed to pollution per minute, because it is what it actually is. (68269)

Modding:]

Added emissions_per_minute property in the energy source, that is supposed to replace the emissions_per_second_per_watt which was basically wrong and hard to work with, both emissions_per_second_per_watt emissions definition will work for some time (at least in 0.17) so mods don't get broken.

So is the new parameter actually emissions per minute, or is it emissions per minute per watt?

Edited: never mind - I tried it out - it's flat rate per minute regardless of power use. That is hugely easier to work with, thank you.

After a realisation of a big misleading mistake, the pollution per second had to be renamed to pollution per minute, because it is what it actually is. (68269)

Modding:]

Added emissions_per_minute property in the energy source, that is supposed to replace the emissions_per_second_per_watt which was basically wrong and hard to work with, both emissions_per_second_per_watt emissions definition will work for some time (at least in 0.17) so mods don't get broken.

So is the new parameter actually emissions per minute, or is it emissions per minute per watt?

Edited: never mind - I tried it out - it's flat rate per minute regardless of power use. That is hugely easier to work with, thank you.

It is affected by actual power use in game, but the lua definition is pollution per minute when 100% energy consumed.